Making Blog With W3C Web Standards

Posted on 11. Jan, 2010 by Waheed Akhtar in All Articles, Resources

Today we have selected a topic called Making Blog with W3C Web Standards, which is very different and unique from our all articles till now and we are sure after reading this, you would definitely check your blog if it is according to the web standards or not. So continue reading and don’t forget to leave your opinion in the comments.

What Are Web Standards?

Web Standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. These standards ensure that the information we are providing is accessible to everyone.

Who Define Web Standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C ) is an international organization who work together to develop Web Standards, Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

What Made Us To Write About Web Standards?

We checked our blog (Smashing Share) to see if it has a valid XHTML and CSS. You can guess from the image above, what the result would have been? It showed 50 errors in Markup/ XHTML and 9 errors in CSS.

While making this blog, we never thought about web standards. It is our biggest mistake that we did not optimized and validated the Markup. We understand many WordPress Plugins mess up with the code and in result create invalid code. There are some other aspects also which make the Markup or CSS invalid. (e.g. Using some hacks etc.).

Also we went through many other blogs to see if they are having valid XHTML and CSS. It surprised that mostly all blogs we went through, having some errors either in the Markup or CSS. You can check this out yourself by visiting any blog and validate it through W3C validation Markup Service or can do it through “Web Developer” toolbar. Download this from the list of Firefox Addons for Designers and Developers.

Should We Design According To The Web Standards?

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 6 was launched in 2001 but people still consider it while designing their website to maintain web standards across all old and new browsers. May be 20% users of your website still use IE6 but you could lose those 20%, if your website is not optimized for IE6. Most websites are designed with web standards and compatibility in mind. Well, do Blogs contain valid XHTML and CSS? Do Blogs designed, coded and maintained keeping web standards in mind?

Why We Wrote About “Making Blog With W3C Web Standards”?

After going through our own blog and many others, it confused us that why blogs are not having valid XHTML or CSS? Creating a blog, making it online and writing regularly is not the only thing we should do with our blog. You should consider blog usability and accessibility as well. Purpose of writing this article is to get an answer to only one question. we are writing this to get opinion from everyone and clear the confusion whether these errors should be fixed or let them go like this?

What we can do to avoid invalid code and have a blog which is error free and according to the W3C web standards?

Also we would love to have some Tutorials about optimizing blogs according to the W3C Standards. We hope to find some Resources for “making blog with W3C web standards“, with the help of designers, developers and blogger community. Lets get in-touch and make the web (specially blogs) according to the standards.

If you enjoyed what you just read and want to help the community to live with web standards, don’t forget to appreciate by tweeting or promoting this in your own way. If you are interested to get informative articles right in your inbox, don’t forget to subscribe to RSS or Email.

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29 Comments

Making Blog With W3C Web Standards | Web Developer

11. Jan, 2010

[...] Today we have selected a topic called Making Blog with W3C Web Standards, which is very different and unique from our all articles till now and we are sure after reading this, you would definitely check your blog if it is according to the web standards or not. [...] Read the full article at the source. [...]

You are now listed on FAQPAL

11. Jan, 2010

Making Blog With W3C Web Standards…

Today we have selected a topic Making Blog with W3C Web Standards. You would definitely check your blog if it is according to the web standards after reading this article….

uberVU - social comments

11. Jan, 2010

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by allwebdesign: Making Blog With W3C Web Standards http://bit.ly/8mspAD...

gudipudi

12. Jan, 2010

this is something truly amazing find, I never observed this ….
gudipudi´s last blog ..Google Launched Real Time Search

Design Dazzling

12. Jan, 2010

Nice article

Designs Wallet

12. Jan, 2010

Thanks for this information

Shurandy Thode

12. Jan, 2010

r.i.p IE. Great article I try to keep standards in my designs but as u said it can get twisted by hacks etc.
Shurandy Thode´s last blog ..Spotlights on: Plagiarizing, What would you do?

E Commerce Web Design

12. Jan, 2010

I very much enjoyed and learning from it.

Thanks..
E Commerce Web Design´s last blog ..Website Navigation Tips

abcphp.com

12. Jan, 2010

Making Blog With W3C Web Standards | Smashing Share…

Today we have selected a topic Making Blog with W3C Web Standards. You would definitely check your blog if it is according to the web standards after reading this article….

tripwire magazine | tripwire magazine

12. Jan, 2010

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Waheed Akhtar

12. Jan, 2010

Thank you guys for the comments

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12. Jan, 2010

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13. Jan, 2010

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13. Jan, 2010

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13. Jan, 2010

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Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius

13. Jan, 2010

I have to admit that I stopped validating my blog template when I bought a wootheme one. However, as you rightly pointed out, many WordPress plugins spoil the code and makes the whole thing difficult to validate. All in all, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to end up with fully validated blogs. This would imply removing nearly all social media plugins and a lot of hand coding.

On the other hand, after finding out that only 3% of my readership uses IE6, I finally let it down. I mean, in one year, this browser will be 10 years old, we do not code websites as we did 10 years ago, so why do we need to support something that was good 10 years ago ?

However, I’m for the fact that even more standards should be included in blogs.
Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..Fortune and glory, Kid! Fortune and glory.

Waheed Akhtar

13. Jan, 2010

Hey Sachin, thanks for detailed feedback and comment. You are right that IE6 is getting older and we should say good bye to this version. But even if we don’t consider IE6, making blog with standards is a difficult task. We should at least digg into this thing and find out some way to make it working according to the standards.

Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius

13. Jan, 2010

HTML 5 is still in draft version but I think that a lot of the new tags will allow us to move blogs towards more standards due to the fact that some hacks we now use will not be necessary anymore. It might also be interesting to delve more in asynchronous methods to reduce the impact of badly coded plugins on standards.
Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..[GMU Redux] Testing bandwidth and load times.

vikas ghodke

13. Jan, 2010

Thanks for the info and article.. i enjoyed reading it

choen

14. Jan, 2010

For me validation is very helpful, so with him I can know where the problem. If the template is valid, the next in the maintenance easier. I have the experience, when I’m modifying a template, it results in the template is my view that mess, then I checked on the validation css, and I quickly found the problem.

Ariel

14. Jan, 2010

I completely agree that this an issue in the blog world. I am a web designer and was shocked when starting a blog how difficult it was to be compliant with any of the templates. Its truly unfortunate because web standards are what will make us be able to advance with cool new features and styles in the future!

Making Blog With W3C Web Standards | Inspiration For You

31. Jan, 2010

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WP Themes

01. Feb, 2010

Nice brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you as your information.

TSwain

01. Feb, 2010

what a great site and informative posts, I will add a backlink and bookmark your site. Keep up the good work!

MrBarns

02. Feb, 2010

Your blog is so informative … ..I just bookmarked you….keep up the good work!!!!

Hey, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, anyway cool blog, I bookmarked you.

ARQUIGRAFICO

02. Feb, 2010

I entered my site in it, and i have 53 errors. Is there a place where i can learn how to fix it?
ARQUIGRAFICO´s last blog ..Add an Antique Sepia touch to your photos with Photoshop.

Codesquid

10. Feb, 2010

We should all be learning how to code with web standards – it reduces platform compatibility issues and gives you clean, easy to maintain mark up. It also tends to load faster and behave more predictably.
Codesquid´s last blog ..The basics of Progressive Enhancement based design

CPG

18. Feb, 2010

It’s funny to write an article about accessibility from guy who do not respect any standards…
Whathever, it’s a nice article.
Read mine if you understand the french: cpgportfolio.com/accessibilite-standards-web-w3c-referenciel-rgaa
CPG´s last blog ..Une solution e-commerce : Prestashop

Waheed Akhtar

19. Feb, 2010

@CPG- Thanks for your comment